


Fire and Ice: Family of Rogues

by nirejseki



Series: Fire and Ice [2]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-05 01:39:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6684142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where Mick's the brains and Len's the brawn, things go a little differently when Lewis Snart shows up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire and Ice: Family of Rogues

**Author's Note:**

> I intended Fire and Ice to be a standalone one-shot, but multiple people wanted to see how Family of Rogues would happen in this universe. So, uh, here's my best shot at it. This one fought me a lot more than the original fic did!
> 
> I'm working on a third part to this series, where these characters go off on Legends of Tomorrow; expect that to be posted soon.

Historically, the problem with having a good crew is that you get comfortable. Lazy. Set in your ways.

Whoever came up with that crap, Mick thought to himself with a considerable amount of aggravation, didn’t have a crew staffed with goddamn _superheroes_. It clearly skewed the curve.

“I can’t believe you forgot to mention the _gorilla_ ,” he said into his commpiece.

“I can’t believe you nearly _torched_ the gorilla,” Barry yelled back.

“I can’t believe you _missed_ ,” Len said.

“Hey, it had some sort of telepathic attack,” Mick defended himself. “Least it ran away after.”

“Guess it couldn’t handle the heat.”

“I just want to jump in to say, Cold, that your commitment to terrible puns is worthy of the highest respect,” Cisco said through the comms as the rest of them groaned. “I salute you.”

“How _did_ you manage to resist Grodd’s attack?” Caitlin asked from her perch monitoring their vitals back at STAR Labs. “Thus far only meta-humans like Barry have shown any resistance to his telepathy.”

“Not so much that I resisted,” Mick said dryly, checking his gun to make sure it still had enough charge left. “But that my first reaction to pain and fear is to try to hit the thing causing it.”

“He learned that one from me,” Len said smugly. “Hey, Barry, want a few lessons?”

“Not until I’m done scraping icicles off my ass from _last_ time, you _jerk_.” A pause. “Guys, I’ve lost the trail. Grodd’s gone underground again and, uh, you could not pay me love or money to go into that sewer. Sorry.”

“In this case, I’m willing to take the temporary victory,” Mick said. “I’m calling it; we’re done for the day. Barry, I see a spark of lightning anywhere before Monday, I’m gonna tell Len not to be so nice next time you two play.”

“I only worked all weekend once,” Barry protested. “And the Jitters rebuild could use –”

“Give it up, Barry,” Cisco said. “Even Caitlin’s nodding. It’s time to catch up on your Netflix.”

“Or, you know, that paying job you have,” West interjected through Cisco’s comm. “Remember that, Barry?”

Six months in, Mick’s new crew was finally starting to work out the kinks. Cisco and Barry had run a very effective midnight raid on the CCPD to wipe his and Len’s slates as clean as possible and so long as Mick and Len both helped out with the occasional meta-human attack (which Barry seemed to attract like starving deer to a salt lick), the CCPD didn’t wonder too hard about them. 

Len was the happiest Mick had ever seen him, practicing his new ice powers and getting regular opportunities for violence against ever more difficult opponents. They had a crew that respected each other – certainly after Len had put the fear of god into everyone else – and Mick had very firmly established that everything worked better when they listened to him, and the hero-side had slowly fallen into line. 

It was a system that worked out great for everyone. Of course, they’d made some mistakes along the way.

Bivolo was one such mistake. 

For the first five months, Mick’s new crew had primarily focused on defending their turf against meta-humans, which conveniently put the CCPD off their backs. That didn’t mean Mick had any intention of going straight. He and Len had run a number of personal jobs, just the two of them; sometimes he’d let Barry come out and face them down (current war games score, 5:2 to them because age and treachery kicks the ass of youth and speed) and sometimes he’d tell him to stand aside (usually when they were screwing with the rich and powerful – Barry’s face had been _priceless_ the first time the Rathaways had told him that they didn’t _need_ their property retrieved because they’d already had it insured.)

But he’d been itching to plan a crew job, something a bit bigger, and the hero-side was by and large hopeless at that. Barry’s speed would be a commodity, of course, but controlling that motor-mouth would be a pain in the ass and he already had one of those, name of Lenny Snart. Plus, Barry and co. objected in principle to being used in thefts. At least to ones that were planned ahead of time; they never seemed to have the same objection to “we need a giant battery to make this plan work, go get the one in the Mercury Labs vault right now.” 

Luckily (or so he’d thought) he’d found some people who were less inclined to protest. Hartley Rathaway had basically shown up at his doorstep and begged to join in when Mick had let it be known that he was looking for a crew to hit a Rathaway political fundraiser. Shawna had come back to town about a month ago and, with Caitlin’s encouragement, was seriously thinking about going back to medical school; all she needed was some starting capital. And another meta he’d let loose, guy by the name of Bivolo, had just rolled back into town. Those three plus him and Len put Mick right in his sweet spot. 

Then the slippery little bastard had decided to double-cross them. 

Bivolo’d been teamed up with Len, hitting the safety deposit boxes while Mick and Hartley terrorized the gala itself after Shawna had popped around disabling the alarms and cameras. Len had iced the boxes with the new cold gun Cisco had made him – his new ice powers were what Mick liked to call “still glitchy” and he was banned from using them outside of training until they’d figured them all out – and he and Bivolo had been pulling out gems like kids at a candy store.

That’s when Bivolo had made his move, jumping on the comms like the arrogant bastard he was to thank them all for their help, tell them that he was taking the loot and leaving them to fight off the cops. 

“Freeze, asshole. I’m literally standing _right here_ ,” Len had said, voice ringing on the comms. “You can’t seriously think I’m going let you just walk out on us.”

Bivolo had laughed. “I think you’ll find yourself a little distracted,” he’d said smugly to Mick’s growing horror. Mick had had exactly one second to think to himself that there was no way Bivolo could be that stupid. “As your friends will be – defending themselves against _you_.”

He _was_ that stupid. 

The line went quiet for a moment. A second later there was screaming. 

Bivolo’s screaming. 

Admittedly, anyone who was dumb enough to turn their rage-inducing powers on Len – who _already_ existed in a constant state of barely-contained rage – was in serious need of being removed from the gene pool, but the damage was done. 

The news played the reel of images of Len rage-smashing his way through a frozen building as Barry tried desperately to get through his cold field on repeat for the next three weeks straight.

\-------------------------

Len almost never talks about being a kid, which, given the man’s tendency towards grandiose speeches, is saying something. Mick’s had to get virtually all of the information he has about Lenny’s childhood from Lisa, who wasn’t exactly there for the first few years, but what she does have to share is typically bad enough that he doesn’t really probe around for more details. 

Len mentioned a grandfather a few times – a memory of kindness, offering calm and control and a refuge, made vague with the passage of time. He’d died early on, around the time Lisa was born, his last instruction an entreaty to Len to care for her. Len had never confirmed it one way or the other, but something he’d said once had given Mick the distinct impression that his grandfather had met his untimely death at the instigation of, if not personally at the hand of, his son. 

Mick always figured that one day he’d snap from all the implications and allusions and just go murder the man, and to hell with the consequences. 

Instead, oddly enough, the first time Mick met Lewis Snart in person had nothing to do with Len or Lisa at all. 

Mick didn’t even recognize him at first. The way Len and Lisa talked about him, the rare times they did, Mick had gotten the impression of someone larger than life, tall and dark and surrounded by a menacing aura. The actual man was a head shorter than Mick, possibly even shorter than the weed Len was currently mimicking now that he was eating every day, big and broad but otherwise entirely indistinct from any other thug in the criminal underworld. 

Mick guesses it makes sense: when you’re a kid, your parents are giants in your eyes.

Though in Len and Lisa’s case, the term “ogre” might be more appropriate. 

It was just some job Mick had picked up, something fast and not too picky about who was being hired. Mick usually avoided mob jobs, especially when Len was around, but they were pretty damn convenient when you needed a quick spot of cash. In Mick’s case, he needed a new set of ID papers, fully made up, and those didn’t come cheap; the last job he’d been on had screwed up just enough to make lying low a necessity for a while. That’s why he was here in Starling, halfway across the country from Len and Lisa – Lisa had some training thing in Utah, something to do with her skating, and Len was there to watch her back and cheer her on, with explicit promises that he wouldn’t break anyone’s kneecap – instead of keeping an eye on them himself. 

Someone offhandedly calls out “Snart” and Mick looks up automatically, half expecting to find someone pissed off and bleeding, but instead he sees the older guy respond. It takes a minute, but he gets it. Mob job – he should have known. Lewis Snart had been a crooked cop until the evidence against him had piled up so high even his backers couldn’t do anything about it, then he’d gone to prison for them. Looks like he was out of the can but still in his employers’ back pocket. 

Snart notices him looking. It’s jarring to see Len’s familiar squint – the “have I seen this person before and do they want to kill me due to circumstances vague?” one – on an older, crueler face, and Mick doesn’t look down in time to signal his disinterest in talking.

“Who’re you?” Snart asks him later, having tracked him down. His voice is smug and grating, all the arrogance of someone with Family backing talking to one of the hired help. 

“Name’s Mick Rory,” Mick replies, knowing better than to lie about something so easily disproven. The only question here is if Snart knows the company his son keeps. Mick’s not going to underestimate anyone who shares blood with Len and Lisa, no matter how scathingly they speak of him or how little respect he might have for the man as a human being. “I’m here for the job. Muscle.”

Snart looks him up and down with a practiced eye. Mick might be a planner at heart, but he can look the part of dumb thug to a tee when he wants to. Eventually Snart snorts, clearly dissatisfied with what he’s seeing. “Decided against bringing the little monster with you today?” he asks, sneering. “Too much trouble?”

Mick’s shoulders tense. So yeah, looks like Snart knows who he is. It also explains Len’s hair-trigger when it comes to being called a monster. 

“He’s doing some other job,” Mick replies carefully. This guy’s still technically Lisa’s legal guardian; if he doesn’t know or care where his kids are, Mick sure as hell isn’t going to tell him. “Don’t know the details.”

Snart huffs and looks him over again. “You have any luck getting him to behave?” he asks. “The little monster just kept getting worse and worse every year he was with me, so don’t expect it to go on getting any better. Personally, I think –” Snart goes on from there, just keeps talking and not really paying attention to if Mick’s responding, making a few gut-turning suggestions for how to keep Len in line, though he never uses Len’s name. Makes a couple of ugly implications about why Mick’d bother keeping someone as troublesome as Len around, too.

Mick doesn’t understand what’s going on until he does, and then he feels sick. He’s passed whatever mental test Snart set up for him, so Snart’s treating him like a colleague, having the equivalent of a _water cooler chat_ about the best way to chain and collar his own kid. 

_I could kill you now_ , Mick thinks to himself for a wild moment, then sees the mob boys at the door watching them, hands on their semis. The message is clear: he makes a move, he’s dead. Snart gets to live another day.

“–honestly, I’m surprised he ended up with someone like you,” Snart concludes his aimless ramble conversationally. It’s nothing like Len’s grand speeches. 

“Why’s that?” Mick grunts, knowing he’s walking straight into the door Snart’s holding open for him but unable to resist the bait.

Snart smiles meanly. “You’re an arsonist, ain’t ya?” he asks, clearly enjoying himself. “I figure you know this already, but the stupid brat’s afraid of sparks.”

Mick thinks of the electrical burns that mark Lenny’s skin and his knuckles go white in an effort to control his temper. 

From the look on Snart’s face, he knows exactly what he’s doing. Mick gets it. Snart might see him as a colleague, someone who’d nod and smile when he talks about what he’s done to Lenny, but this isn’t a friendly chat. From Snart’s perspective, Mick’s stolen something he considers his rightful property. It’d be unprofessional for him to make the first move against Mick here and now, his standing with the Family not quite as firm as when he’d been a cop in good standing, but if he can entice Mick into losing his temper, the mob boys will shoot him down and there’ll be no one left to keep him from picking up right where he left with Lenny.

It’s not half as clever a trap as Mick could come up with – even Lenny, who tends to hit first and think later, who’s a born adrenaline junkie that tends to measure the wisdom of a given situation by how much fun it’ll be, could come up with something subtler – but it’s exactly the sort of low animal cunning he would expect from someone like Snart.

So Mick swallows back the fire in his belly, thinks of it not as dousing his flames but concentrating them until they’re hot enough to burn through anything. And he give his best dumb grunt grin at Snart, shrugs and says, thickening his Keystone accent to its earliest, most back-country rural iteration, “Can’t say I’ve noticed. He does his own thing, you know? ‘sides, I’m too busy watching shit burn to really pay attention.”

He can _see_ Snart’s estimation of his IQ drop precipitously as soon as he mentions the pyromania that he’s (justifiably) known for. Sometimes the assumption that mental illness automatically meant stupidity pisses him off; other times, like now, it’s just useful.

Mick knows he’s going to need to watch his back more than usual on this job, that this isn’t going to be the last time Snart tries to trip him up. It doesn’t matter what Snart tries, though, he’s not getting what he wants.

Mick is _never_ going to let him get his hands on Lenny or Lisa again.

\------------------

It’s coming up on two days, and there’s still no trace of Len. 

Cisco was running what searches he can technologically while Barry did another run-through of the city by foot. Unfortunately, as Mick was well aware, there were plenty of places a criminal could hide that weren’t visible from the street or any of the traffic cams. 

It’d happened on such a nice night, too. Lisa had come to town, much to Len’s poorly concealed delight, and they’d wanted to show her a good time. They were all pretty sure Cisco was finally going to ask her out later this week and Lisa’d wanted some walk-around cash to buy him some drinks, so they’d gone to knock over the cash box at the racetrack. The job itself had gone smooth, but then neither Len nor Lisa had showed up at the meet up point. 

If it’d just been Len, Mick might’ve assumed he’d gone off on his own in a sudden fit of introversion, but not when Lisa was involved. He’d broken radio silence on the comms, but there’d still been nothing.

When he went back to see if they’d stayed behind for some reason, he’d found Lisa unconscious and Len’s comm discarded on the ground next to her. 

Once awake, Lisa had reported that she’d seen Len get grabbed and pulled into the back of a van, but hadn’t been able to get a more positive identification before she’d been knocked out.

Cisco had reprogrammed the satellites into what he’d called a cryoradar, but there hadn’t been any hits on that, either. Stupid name aside, it should pick up signs of where Len had recently discharged his cold gun or unleashed his powers. So far, nothing. Whoever’d taken Len was doing a good job of hiding him. 

Mick had moved past antsy and into quiet, seething rage.

Len could take care of himself, he knew that, but ever since the particle accelerator, he’d stuck even closer than usual to Mick. The combination of his new abilities plus his ever-tempestuous temper made for a lethal combination, and Mick wasn’t sure if he should be more concerned about what might happen to Len or what Len might do to someone else. He was starting to care less and less about the latter. 

“Guys!” Cisco exclaimed, interrupting Mick’s increasingly dark thoughts. “I think I have a hit – corner of Fifth and Hoyt, UV thermal reading. Probably his powers.”

“On my way,” Barry said. 

The comms started crackling as Barry got closer, indicating a dead spot, and Mick resigned himself to hearing the results of Barry’s discovery after he got out. On the bright side, the fact that the hit had come from one of Central City’s dead spots was promising – if someone was keeping Len against his will, that’d be a factor in where they’d hold him.

Ten minutes later, Barry’s voice came on the comms again, and he sounded annoyed. “–you guys hear me yet?” 

“Any luck?” Mick asked.

“Yeah, I found him,” Barry replied. “He’s _fine_ , apparently. _Peachy._ Working a job with his dad.”

Mick and Lisa shared a quick, horrified glance.

“You sure about that?” Lisa asked, leaning forward. “Come back here and confirm with a visual.”

Two minutes later, Barry was back and scowling. Cisco pulled up an image for him on the main screen and he nodded. “Yeah, Lewis Snart; that’s the guy Len was working with. Man, if he was going to ditch for another job, couldn’t he have told us ahead of time so we wouldn’t have had to panic for two days straight?”

Mick just picked up his gear and headed out, leaving Lisa to explain however she felt best. This wasn’t a matter for his crew. There was _no way_ Len was working for his dad willingly. Mick needed to go find him, figure out what was going on, get him back. Then he’ll be able to deal with Lewis Snart the way he deserves.

He wasn’t expecting Len to run from him.

To be more specific, Mick had walked into the room Cisco had found, Len had looked up from a table filled with plans and papers, paled in _terror_ at the sight of him, and then he’d promptly iced up a wall around Mick. By the time Mick burned through it, Len was long gone. 

Mick’s left wondering if some sort of brain trauma is involved.

“Hey, boss,” Barry said, zipping into the room and then blinking owlishly at the wrecked ice wall slowly melting into the floor. “…did you find him?”

“Yeah, I found him,” Mick said, still angry. “He iced me into the corner.”

“Okay, yeah, that’s weird.” Barry coughed a little. “So, uh, Lisa explained and apparently I seriously stuck my foot in it earlier. Anything I can do to help?”

“We need to figure out what’s going on,” Mick said grimly. “Help me search the building; if we can figure out what Len was looking at, we might be able to figure out why he was here at all.”

Barry nodded and dashed off. 

Mick tried to look through the desk, but Len’s taken whatever he was looking at with him. It’s not like Len to be looking at blueprints on his own – sure, he’s a goddamn genius when it comes to finding weak spots in a building’s security and Mick consults him regularly, but he generally prefers to leave the whole planning business to Mick. Why would Len run from him? Is he planning out some sort of job? How is his dad involved – and why would Len ever tolerate his dad being in the same city as Lisa? He should have warned her to get out first thing, but her phone hasn’t pinged once.

Barry flashed in front of Mick, his face gone somber and his jaw clenched. “You found something?” Mick asked pointlessly. Whatever it is, Barry’s taking it seriously.

“Nothing in the building, but I’m pretty sure I found the van they took him in,” Barry confirmed grimly, and led the way outside to an unmarked van parked amidst several others of the same make and model. 

There’s nothing to distinguish the van from the outside, but when they pull the back open, there’s a cage. The vehicle’s been retrofitted from something used by animal collectors at the pound, but there’s a fuse box set up next to it, attached to the bars. The entire inside of the car is set up with an excessive number of florescent light bulbs; Mick’s willing to bet that they’re black lights – UV lights on a small scale that would confuse Cicso’s scanner and conceal the backtrail of Len’s cold powers. 

Barry pointed at the fuse box. “Electricity running through the bars – that’s just like the set up for the heat shields that Cisco made for the CCPD way back when,” he reports. “Same thing that’s in my suit, the therma-threading, just on a larger basis. If Cold tried to ice those, it’d scorch right off, no impact.” 

“That can’t be right,” Cisco buzzed through the comms. “If you ran a charge like that through the bars, it’d give you a hell of a shock every time you touched any of the cage dead on, even the part you’re sitting on, so it'd hurt a lot all the time – that’s why I used shields, so I could only run it through the outward-facing portion.”

“Cisco,” Barry said hesitantly. “I don’t think they really cared.”

Mick’s face twisted and he turned away scanning the parking lot. Warehouse district – even in an area this crappy, there ought to be…

“Barry,” he said, interrupting Barry and Cisco’s hushed and increasingly alarmed conversation. “Security cam, northeast corner. Another one down the block on the other side of the building.” 

“Bring everything you can back here,” Cisco ordered, arrogant in his technological domain and without the slightest trace of humor left in his voice. “If they have _anything_ on them, I’ll get it.”

The quality of the video is profoundly gritty and terrible, but Cisco manages to pinpoint the moment that the van rolled into the parking lot. A bulky figure gets out of the driver’s seat – Lisa flinches automatically in recognition at the silhouette – and pulls open the back. 

Cisco turns up the audio as best he can, but the original recording quality is awful – it crackles regularly, filled with static and white noise, making it difficult to make out what’s being said. 

“–looks like my little monster grew up to be a real one,” Snart says on the film, talking to the back of the van which he’s wisely staying a few feet back from. They can’t see Lenny where he must be, inside the van, but they can hear his shrieks of rage. “What do they call you freaks? Metahumans?”

Len’s response is inaudible. Mick hopes it involved a lot of profanity.

“Look–” _crackle_ “– the bright side, son,” Snart says. “Your little display for the national news–” Another burst of static. “–finally found some use for you. A few friends of your enemy, actually; ARGUS has been looking to get its hands on some of you monsters –” _crackle_ “ –and they’re willing to pay a pretty penny for you. Once I decide to hand you over, of course; I’ve got some work for you to do first.”

This time Len’s response _definitely_ involves profanity.

Snart laughs, says something they can’t hear. Pats the side of the van in a possessive manner, smirking at the man inside.

Len’s response is audible: “–know that the Flash throws –” _crackle_ “–lightening now, right? I ain’t scared of electricity anymore. I’m not doing _anything_ for you, you little–”

The audio washes out into a haze of static, but Snart paces a little, inconveniently turns his back on the camera to continue facing the inside of the van. He says something, talks with his hands a bit. 

When the audio comes back on, Len’s stopped making any noise at all and Snart has a gruesome, triumphant smirk on his face.

“So, you gonna be a good boy now, son?” he says, flicking open a switch on the side.

Len clambers out of the back of the van, what visible skin there is still reddened in a number of places where he must have hit the bars, his cheek and ear, his blistered hands. His shoulders are slumped, defeat written in every line, and he’s looking at the ground. His hands are shaking, terror and rage in equal measure, but he doesn’t do anything, just nods quietly. 

“Don’t think I heard that,” Snart crows.

Mick clicks the video off before he has to watch any more. 

STAR Labs is silent for a good, long minute. 

“So,” Caitlin finally says. “We’re going to murder him, right?”

“Careful, sweetie,” Lisa replies, her own hands clenched into fists to hide their shaking. “That’s first degree right there. Best to leave that to the professionals.”

“But no, really, we’re totally going to murder him, right?” Cisco asked.

Lisa leans over and kisses him.

“Let’s just focus on getting Len out for now,” Mick says.

_Then_ , he thinks, _we are_ definitely _going to murder him_.

\------------------------------------------

Figuring out what Snart is doing to Len to make him obey is hard. Figuring out what Snart’s got planned _for_ Len, on the other hand, is easy. 

Mick has been aware of Lewis Snart for a long time and he likes to think he knows the basics of the man’s personality. Above all else, he’s greedy and he’s mean and he’s vengeful. The mob did well for Snart for years, propping him up as a cop and then as a con, but the man’s cunning, not smart, and that limits his ability to advance. His plans pretend to rely on smarts, like Len’s tricks of timing or Mick’s careful positioning of his resources, but in the end Mick’s found that they all come down to brute force. There’s room for relentless, soulless brute force in any organized crime outfit, but you’ll never play with the big boys that way – something Snart has no doubt discovered to his dismay.

If you want to climb up the ladder of the Family, your options are to rise through merit or to rise through blood. Snart’s failed the first, so he’s trying the second.

Two influential Family enforcers are found dead in their beds within the next two days, throats black with frostbite. Premeditated assassination is far from Len’s style or preference, but every gun can kill when it’s pointed the right way and Len’s a hell of a gun for someone to have. Thus far, nobody really misses the goons that’ve been killed, but there’s no way Snart’ll stop there. Fancy talk about ARGUS aside – Cisco verified that their offer was genuine, which had made Barry need to go breathe between his knees for a while – Snart had always resented Len being out of his control. Now that he has him – _how does he control him, what is he doing to him, what does he have over his head_ – Snart’s going to use him to take down all his enemies.

And Lewis Snart used to be a cop. 

Barry’s keeping a sleepless eye on the CCPD. Joe West spread around a warning of a potential mob hit inside the department – they can’t afford to use names, they don’t want to get Len away from his dad only to have to fish him out of Iron Heights – but there’s only so much that can be done.

Two kills, that’s a show of strength. Once you do that, you need to give your opponents some time to consider your offer. Mick thinks that Snart’s going to change tactics now, pull a heist instead. With Len and Len’s new powers at his disposal, he’ll hit anywhere he wants and god help any officers that show up to try to stop them on their way out. 

If only for Len’s sanity, they have to stop Snart before that happens. 

Mick kicks Barry off the case over his protests when he gets called in by his day job, some dead body without a head found down by the docks that they want him to analyze. “You’re useless to me if you’re exhausted,” he told Barry. “You’re over-thinking this – go do some nice, relaxing chemical analysis or whatever. Make sure we’re not going to have to _also_ deal with a head-exploding meta while we’re occupied with this.”

Ironically enough, Barry’s day job ends up providing them the intel they need to figure out what Snart is holding as leverage over Len.

A remote-detonated subdermal thermite bomb, hiding in Lisa’s head. 

Mick doesn’t doubt it for a second, and he knows Len wouldn’t either. Christ, every time he thinks he can’t hate Lewis Snart more, the man goes above and beyond. 

“We need to know what Snart’s plan is,” Mick says grimly, running the tips of his finger over his favorite lighter in a nervous tic he’d thought he’d beaten back years ago. “I’m telling you, he’s going to hit somewhere for money, sometime soon, and he’s going to use Len to put some bodies in the ground while he does it.”

“Why can’t he just steal something _without_ hurting people, like you usually do?” Caitlin asks. 

“He’s not good enough to plan something like that out,” Lisa replies bitterly, spinning around on her office chair. “His plans always fall through; he always needs his Plan B, and Plan B is always killing people. Besides, he knows Lenny will hate attacking people who didn’t do anything, and that’s reason enough for him.”

“Well, he’s just lost his tech guy, right?” Barry asks. “Can’t we get someone to infiltrate his group?”

“It’s a good idea. It can’t be me or Lisa,” Mick says. “Not only does Snart know us and not trust us, Len won’t let us – that’s why he iced me in. He didn’t want to risk me getting a bomb in my head, and he’d never risk Lisa. That means you’re up, Barry.”

“Wait, _me_? I mean, sure. But won’t I be kind of conspicuous?”

“I’m not saying you go as the Flash,” Mick says impatiently. “Or even as Barry Allen, CCPD CSI. Go as Sam Allen – five years older than you, went delinquent at a young age, has a dad on the inside for murder in the first. Perfect background for a baby felon; if anyone asks why you weren’t in the papers around the time Doc Allen got thrown in the pen, say you got disowned beforehand. But they’re not gonna ask.”

“Hey, that’s a really great cover story,” Barry says, pleased. “Did you just come up with that?”

“No, kid. I had false identity papers drawn up for you in case you got caught as the Flash and needed to go on the run.”

Barry pauses, staring at him. “You’re…joking, right?”

Mick stares back impassively. 

Lisa snorts. “He’s not joking,” she tells Barry. “I helped get them all stamped and scattered. Check your desk drawer. We got a set for everyone – you all _do_ realize that aiding and abetting vigilantism is against the law, right?”

“Um,” Caitlin says, and dives for her desk. “Hey, why does my fake identity have a more interesting life than I do?”

“ _Not_ what’s important right now. Barry, go. Cisco, Caitlin – we need to get the bomb out of Lisa. Figure out how.”

“On it!”

Barry’s infiltration works surprisingly well given that he seems to have based his criminal persona on something out of _Breaking Bad_. Or a parody thereof, Mick really can’t tell. He knows some facts about the security system, claims to have helped steal the diamond that Len picked up the first time he was in town, even dredges up a couple of nasty comments about Len’s inability to control his temper, which pleases Snart. 

Len’s lack of response to the jabs is troubling.

“What’re you doing here, kid?” Len finally asks when they go to pack up for the job, which is apparently happening tonight. He sounds painfully tired, his voice dull and lifeless.

“We know about the bomb,” Barry replies in an undertone. “We’re working on it. Lisa’s going to be okay. And don’t worry about me, either – if he tries to get me with a bomb, I can probably phase it out somewhere isolated.”

“Only reason I haven’t chased you off,” Len says with a sigh. Then he adds, sounding alarmed, “Mick’s not around, is he? He’s back at base?”

“Yeah, back at base. Don’t worry. As soon as we get the bomb out, we can get you out.”

No response.

“I’m serious,” Barry insists to whatever expression Len has on his face. “We get the word, we’ll be gone before he can blink.”

“Plan B,” Len replies inanely, then Snart interrupts them with a yell to stop dawdling. 

Listening to the heist go down is one of the most painful experiences of Mick’s life, and not just because of his concern for Len’s mental health. It’s a _terrible_ plan, relying on contingencies of timing (that don’t work), uses the least efficient entrance method (which wasn’t tested), and Mick doesn’t even want to know about their exit plan, if one even exists beyond “have Len murder innocent cops and civilians”. 

But it’s working. They’re buying time for Cisco to modify his air gun to remove the bomb form Lisa, Barry clearing the obstacles to make sure no one dies, Len backing him up as best as he can without cluing his dad into the fact that they know each other as anything more than acquaintances. Len’s not thinking straight – he never does when his dad’s in the picture – but he’s holding it together better than Mick might’ve expected.

Then Snart shoots Barry right in front of Len. 

Everything goes to hell after that. 

\----------------------------------

“–to conclude,” Cisco said. “The fact that there _may_ have been a teensy bit of murder and death involved yesterday was _totally_ justified. And not at all illegal. I mean, more than it usually is. Less! Less than it usually is. Much less.”

Detectives West and Thawne looked deeply unimpressed.

And Cisco had put in the effort to make a PowerPoint, too.

Mick put his feet up on the chair in front of him, drawing the two detectives’ attention to where he was sitting, and to the rather glaring white bandage around his arm and the nasty bit of frostbite on his cheek. “Sorry, boys,” he said. “You’ll find no evidence that Len was involved in any murders until it became a clear-cut matter of self-defense of both himself and me. Unless you want to bring us up for manslaughter, of course.”

“No,” West said reluctantly. “No one’s going to bring charges. It’s not like the older Snart’ll be much missed, and the other ones have all survived, technically. Could you _try_ not to bring down a terrorist alert on the city next time?”

“In our defense,” Barry said. “We had no idea that there were snipers on the nearby buildings until they started shooting. Cold did try to warn us that Snart would have a Plan B if Mick showed up or if something went wrong.”

Mick was pretty pissed at himself for missing that one. He prided himself on not losing his temper and what does he do the second Len’s backup is taken out of play? Run straight into an unknown situation.

“Can we at least ask why the middle of Woodbury Street is now a skating rink?” Eddie asked.

“No one used Woodbury anyway,” Cisco replied, crossing his arms and glaring. “It was a little shortcut street with no storefronts and everyone likes it better now.”

The two cops looked around at the uniform set of stubborn faces and forbidding body language. _They may be young and stupid_ , Mick thinks to himself, pleased, _but they’re a pretty good crew_.

West grunted, but his shoulders did relax. “So I guess we’re not arresting anyone today,” he said, clearly still somewhat dissatisfied. “How’s, uh, you know, doing?”

“Been better,” Mick said shortly. Len and Lisa had vanished off together, which he thought was for the best. Len had saved him from the sniper – albeit with a shot from his cold gun to Mick’s _face_ – and then killed his father with a blast of ice through the chest from his hand. Then he’d promptly freaked out, lost control of his powers, and turned the entire area into an ice rink which, as reactions to patricide go, Mick figures is pretty reasonable. 

“Must’ve been pretty awful, what with his dad and all…”

“He’ll get over it.”

Mick’s sure of that. Len just needs something to clear his mind, something new to focus on. He needs not to dwell. Mick’ll think of something. 

Mick swings himself up and heads out. While Len decompresses with Lisa, he’s going to do something nice and mindless. Maybe knock over an illegal chemical lab in the warehouse district, see if he can find something to spice up one of his accelerant mixes. You know, what he’d been _planning_ to do with his day, not sit around and be whined at by policemen.

He is gone literally three hours when Cisco comes buzzing on the comms. “Boss, you have got to come see this,” he said excitedly. “ _Alternate universe us_ just showed up!”

_You have_ got _to be kidding me_ , Mick thinks. 

He does a quick mental check to make sure it hasn’t suddenly become April First. Nope, still mid-October. _Goddamn superheroes_. “On my way,” he said, tossing the more securely bottled chemicals he’s found so far into a bag. “Keep the comms open and turn up reception; I want to hear what they say before I show.”

“Gotcha, will do.”

“You have a boss?” he heard Barry say distantly. He assumes from context that this must be alternate Barry, because his wouldn’t be so stupid. “Tell me it isn’t Harrison Wells.”

“No – wait, do you mean Harrison Wells Harrison Wells, or do you mean Eobard Thawne Harrison Wells?” Cisco asked. “Wait, did you know about that? Is that a thing in your universe?”

“Man, it is _totally_ a thing in our universe,” a voice that sounded just like Cisco’s said in return. Two Cisco Ramos. The world was doomed. “It was awful.”

“ _So awful_ ,” their Cisco replied. Mick climbed on his motorcycle and headed back, shaking his head as the two Ciscos proceeded to dominate the ensuing conversation with an exceedingly long and terrible digression regarding how awful Eobard Thawne was, with occasional inputs from the two Barrys. 

(“Did you realize that he might have had those cameras in there for the whole fifteen years?” “Oh. My. God. I did _not_ need to think that.” “I know! I was a _teenager_ in that bedroom!” “Brain bleach, brain bleach!” “Oh, man, he could have probably could have gotten me to do whatever he wanted just by threatening to release some of the poetry I wrote when I was fourteen into the world.” “Never mention that poetry aloud again. I don’t know, maybe he was over-thinking it?”)

Len’s already waiting by the door when Mick arrives. He’s grinning like it’s his birthday. That may be the only decent result from this whole disaster: between Len’s familial angst and his love of science fiction absurdity, the latter will win every time. Mick should’ve just agreed to see Star Trek.

Mick walks in and stops right at the entrance, shaking his head. 

“Christ, there really are alternate universe versions of you,” he says. It wasn’t that he didn’t _believe_ them, but it’s just…weird. 

One Barry jumps to his feet when he sees them, while one Cisco immediately takes a step back. Those must be the alternative versions. Mick mentally dubs them Barry-2 and Cisco-2. Time will tell, of course, but he’s already leaning towards thinking of them as the inferior versions. 

“Holy crap, it’s Captain Cold and Heatwave!” Cisco-2 exclaims. 

Cisco gives his alternative self a weird look. “Duh, man. They can’t be that different in your universe if you recognize them on sight.”

“No, but like, why are they _here_?”

“Because I called them?” Cisco said helplessly. “Obviously?”

“Why would you call them?” Barry-2 asks.

“Because the boss would kick my ass if I tried to do this without him?” Barry replies. 

“Wait, who’s the boss?”

Barry and Cisco point wordlessly at Mick. Len – who has been doing a decent job of trying to keep a straight face about all of this, particularly given his recent emotional instability – just loses it at that point, cracking up at the expressions on the alternatives’ faces until he’s literally bent over a side table and may be turning blue in the face.

“I’m guessing he ain’t the boss where you come from,” he manages to choke out between cackles. The hero-side – both sets thereof – are scowling at him. 

“Uh, _no_ ,” Cisco-2 says, then brightens. “Wait, you guys are like, superheroes here? You’re, like, criminals and supervillains on our Earth.”

Len’s cackling is really becoming disturbing. Barry looks vaguely embarrassed by it. 

“Um, they’re still thieves if that’s what you’re wondering,” he says. “But Mick’s really good at planning things out, so he sort of sticks around and keeps us from getting our asses handed to us by metas on a regular basis.”

“Wait, your version of Heatwave can _think_?”

And they’d started this meeting off on such a promising foot.

There’s virtually no transition between Len being bent over laughing to his going for Barry-2’s throat. It’s so seamless that Barry-2 takes a second to realize what’s going on before he tries to flash out of range – too late, of course, since Len threw out his cold field the second he got angry. 

“ _Len_ ,” Mick snaps even as Len pins Barry-2 to the floor with one hand at his throat, straddling his waist, and raises his other hand in a fist that’s starting to turn blue with cold. Len stops cold, but his eyes are still narrowed. “Get off of him.”

“Yeah, get off of me!” Barry-2 yelps, characteristic flickers of lightning crackling around him as he tries and fails to use his speed to get out from under Len. 

“Fine,” Len says, clambering off ungraciously. “But that’s his one warning. Next time he loses a finger.”

“You probably shouldn’t insult boss-man when Cold’s around,” Cisco tells his gaping duplicate. “Cold gets touchy.”

“I…see that,” Cisco-2 says dazedly. “Um. Man. Our Captain Cold doesn’t do…that. Wait, how’d he keep Barry from running?”

“Cold field,” Len says smugly, anger starting to retreat as he warms to the idea of having perfected the cold field faster than his alternative version. “Slows down atoms – normal people freeze, speedsters get slow.”

“But you didn’t pull out any tech..?”

“As fun as this conversation is,” Mick interrupts, deciding that a bit of order should be introduced at some point. “I’m assuming you didn’t come into our universe just to talk shop and draw comparisons.”

“Uh, no,” Barry-2 says, looking embarrassed. “We wanted to know if you’d had any luck defeating Zoom.”

“Who’s Zoom?” Barry asked. “Cisco, did we go after any new speed metas called Zoom? Or…whatever his powers are?”

“Wait, you don’t have Zoom? What about the Earth-2 breaches?”

“We don’t have any breaches…”

The alternatives look floored. “Did you go back in time?” Barry-2 asks Barry, who nods. “And then the singularity opened back up and caused a black hole?”

“Whoa, whoa, _whoa_ , that _definitely_ did not happen,” Cisco says, looking alarmed. “Yours _re-opened_? That _sucks_. I thought Eobard gave instructions on how to minimize the risk of that?”

“He did,” Cisco-2 replies. “It happened anyway. It didn’t happen here?”

“No, it stayed shut after Barry came back in time and Cold killed Eobard.”

“ _Hold it_ ,” Cisco-2 exclaimed. “ _Captain Cold_ killed Eobard Thawne?”

“Well, yeah,” Barry says. “It was pretty sweet. Very, um, cathartic. How’d it happen on your Earth?”

“Um, well, you know Eddie? Eddie Thawne?”

“Obviously. He and Iris are getting married in a month and he’s been hiding in here like every other day; it’s kinda hard to miss him.”

“…oh. Um. On our Earth, he, uh, maybe-kinda-sorta committed suicide to erase evil Wells – Eobard Thawne – from the timeline?”

“I _knew_ that was a bad plan,” Mick mutters to himself. 

Len’s scowling for some reason. “Hey, now I’ve got a question,” he drawls. “I know my sci fi tropes. What’s the likelihood that you doubles coming through to our Earth will cause the barrier between our Earth and our Earth-2 to weaken and those breaches you’re talking about to open up?”

Everyone goes quiet and thinks about that.

“Um…oops?” Barry-2 says, grinning weakly.

“We can give you the formula on how to close the breaches?” Cisco-2 adds. “But you should probably rescue your version of, I mean, their version of, uh, well, you should probably rescue Jessie first…”

Mick closes his eyes, feeling the onset of a headache. “Barry and Cisco, please interrogate our guests on all the things we might have to deal with; I’ll come up with a plan to deal with it later. Then make sure they leave.”

“I want to go a round or two in the accelerator with both Flashes,” Len said, visibly perking up at the thought of recreational violence, particularly of the anti-Flash variety. Their version of Barry and Cisco practically beam at him, clearly relieved that he’d gone back to normal. His version of normal, anyway. “Before they go.”

Barry-2 looked mildly alarmed, but not nearly as much as he should be. “What do you mean, ‘go a round’?”

Barry patted his alternate on the arm. “Oh, it’s great,” he says. “You know what, I’m going to let you go first so you can experience it for yourself.”

Mick’s _such_ a good influence.


End file.
